What really drew her to the property, though, was its grass airstrip.  

In 2006, Tabitha met Greg, an aircraft mechanic and manager of Livingston Municipal Airport (8AD) in Tennessee, while she was vacationing in the area. Six weeks later, they were married in Tabitha’s Bonanza over Dale Hollow Lake. After a few years of living in north central Tennessee, the Boohers decided to return to Arkansas and open the airstrip for others to enjoy as well. So, River Bend Aero Ranch, a fly-in campground, was born. 

“There aren’t many grass strips like ours around, with 153 acres and only one home,” said Tabitha Booher. “There are lots of trails through the woods, and it is a great place to be. I love living here and enjoying nature, but we have always felt like it was too wonderful not to share.” 

Tabitha still has her Bonanza, and Greg has a Twin Comanche, as well as several other planes including a Great Lakes biplane that was the inspiration of the River Bend Aero Ranch logo. To safely accommodate these and visiting aircraft, the Boohers purchased two neighboring properties and extended the sole north-south runway several years ago. It is now 3,300 feet long by 75 feet wide at an estimated elevation of 910 feet msl. 

“We bought the property off the north end of the runway and took down a bunch of large trees and cleared a few acres to the south to open up the approaches and departures out of here,” Tabitha said. “Greg is an IA, as well as a pilot, and he says you are more likely to have a partial power failure than a full power failure, so eliminating those trees can really help. It’s a pretty long grass strip, as far as grass strips go, and it is very smooth.

“We are not on the sectional, so we have this out-of-sight, out-of-mind feeling. That probably keeps the random person from dropping in, but there are a lot of folks around here that know about us. We encourage people to come out here, especially pilot training and people wanting to practice approaches or an ‘emergency’ landing, that kind of thing.”

One of the other significant improvements the couple made to the land wasn’t related to aviation but rather their equestrian interests—primarily barrel racing. But even though the shelter was made for horses, airplanes can use it as well. 

“I asked Greg, ‘What do you think the biggest plane that could land here is?’” Tabitha said. ”Although he said a DC-3, at the time we didn’t know anybody with a DC-3. But we looked up the dimensions and built the building 120-foot-by-75-foot deep with a 19-foot side wall for my horse arena, which is just a dirt floor. We could always put an airplane in there if we need to. And it wasn’t long after that someone wanted to come to our fly-in with their C-47. They would end up flying a Luscombe in instead, but it was kind of funny that the other plane could have fit. So far, no DC-3 has flown here, although they could.”  

Large, certified twins aren’t the only aircraft that could fly into the airstrip, either. River Bend Aero Ranch is welcoming to drones, ultralights, and experimental aircraft. Tabitha provided a brief overview of the many recreational opportunities available in southwestern Arkansas. The Boohers, with advance scheduling, are available to drive fly-in guests to local attractions in the surrounding mountains.  

“The county we are in is 37 percent national forest and the counties to the north and east are both 65 percent national forest,” she said. ”So, there are a lot of areas to get out and enjoy nature. Wolf Pen Gap is one of the largest attractions with over 40 miles of ATV/UTV trails and rentals available. The Cherry Hill Store and Cafe is only a mile from the ranch and Little Missouri Falls is a nice day trip especially in late spring. Queen Wilhelmina State Park is at the top of Rich Mountain with beautiful overlooks along the Talimena National Scenic Byway.

“Downtown Mena has shopping and a restaurant that’s more than 100 years old. On the ranch there are miniature cattle (American Dexters) and horses. Additionally, many folks like walking the trails or fishing in the Ouachita River or one of the stocked ponds. If you like to swim, the river has a long, deep section, or take a kayak or canoe down it.”

The word has gotten around to some that River Bend Aero Ranch is a great place to stay. The Boohers used to host fly-ins regularly but haven’t in some time, though they are happy to do so in the future. They are still always glad to accommodate fly-in visitors (and campers), having converted the shop into a vacation rental space for pilots. 

• READ MORE: Sleeping on The Field: Airports With Campgrounds

“It’s more like flying out to the country and enjoying yourself alone than going where there is a crowd, like you have at an airshow,” Tabitha Booher said. “It’s not commercialized at all. We have an apartment in our barn, which used to be a hangar. We have also built a 50-by-100-foot hangar since moving here. So, we can usually put airplanes inside. We don’t charge anything for people to camp here but do take donations. We also have five or six RV hookups here and an RV park right next door.” 

Greg Booher said that the couple would love for more pilots to visit their airstrip and that most have heard about River Bend Aero Ranch through word of mouth. They suspect an upcoming solar eclipse on April 8 will be a significant draw for pilots from around the country. 

“We have the URL flyincampground.com that we have had probably for 15 years,” Greg said. “That brings some traffic our way. We get a lot of flybys but not a lot of people that stop. We would like to have more activity but don’t know how to get people’s attention, I guess. We will treat you in so many ways, you will have to like one of ’em!

“We have a big thing coming up [in] April. The [solar] eclipse is coming through Mena, and I guess we are supposed to have some of the longest time of total eclipse, something like 4 minutes and 7 seconds of darkness. They are expecting 30,000 people to come to town and over 100 airplanes flying into Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport. So, if anyone was looking to avoid the traffic there, this would be a good place to land, hang out, and enjoy the eclipse.”

The post Fly-In Camping at River Bend Aero Ranch appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It looked like airplane heaven.

Dawn and I had been living and cruising the Caribbean aboard our 42-foot sailboat, Windbird, for the previous three years. On long passages, we curled up in the cockpit at night, watching phosphorescence stream into the starlit combers sweeping under our stern and listening to the gurgle of water past the hull, and dreamed up our post-sailing life together. It would be centered around general aviation, we determined, but would also include terrestrial adventures like motorcycling, camping, and travel. It would involve a return to the Pacific Northwest, where we lived a decade previously and still missed. We’d get a quiet place in the country, with lots of room for our dog, Piper, to run and roam. We’d take an active role in forging our homestead, getting dirt under our nails and calluses on our hands while building upon some of the more practical skills we had gained in our years at sea.

This morning, almost exactly four years after I first laid eyes on our future home, I awoke to bright sunlight streaming through our bedroom window. It’s another beautiful summer day, with a light breeze just rustling the windsock past the handsome strand of cedars. I get up and put coffee on the stove then step out to the hangar. It’s a bit of a mess, with boxes and detritus from the move still scattered about, but I’m steadily building workbenches and custom shelving and getting things organized. I open the 44-foot hydraulic hangar door and sunshine flows over the Stinson, sitting rather incongruously gift wrapped in painter’s plastic. Last week, I noticed the finishing tape over the left wing spar was lifting and peeling back in two spots, requiring I take those areas down to bare fabric, iron the tape flat, reapply adhesive (Poly-Brush, as my airplane is covered with the Poly-Fiber system), and build the finish back up. Today, I’m spraying Poly-Spray, the silvery UV coating that likes to get everywhere (thus the gift-wrapped Stinson and tarps over everything nearby).

Just another day in airplane heaven.

Our 50-by-60-foot hangar is basically as I envisioned when I first saw the clearing it occupies, except it has an attached 15-by-60-foot, two-bedroom apartment that wasn’t in the original plan. The wooded building site up the hill is still undisturbed. We actually went so far as having an architect draft house plans based on a rustic design I’ve had in my head for years before COVID-19 and runaway construction costs made us choose what we wanted more: a house or hangar. But the apartment has turned out really well—better than I imagined, actually—and I think we’ll be happy to live here for some time. Both my life and career have tended to go in half-decade cycles, and I suspect that in five years or so I’ll start to get the construction itch again. For the moment, it is very well scratched.

The last time I wrote about our progress, in the April 2023/Issue 936 column, we still had bare studs in the apartment and a gaping hole in the front of our hangar. Over the following months, I assembled the hydraulic door with our contractor’s help, hired a drywall company to do Sheetrock and texturing, and painted the place myself. We ordered custom cabinets and quartz countertops, which contractors had installed along with the plank flooring. I installed the tub surround, toilet, and vanity, and did all the electrical and plumbing finish work, including installing the tankless propane hot water heater.

Outside, I trenched in the gas line conduit from the propane tank and drain hoses from the downspouts and catch basins to the county-mandated stormwater dispersion trenches, which were multiday projects in their own right. I used our immensely useful Kubota BX-23S tractor/backhoe (my first brand-new vehicle) to get everything filled and graded nicely, and our concrete contractor poured the apron, stoops, and side patio. I brought in three dump trucks of gravel to build up the driveway and four of topsoil for the yard. Seeding, covering, and watering the new lawn was a major project that is ongoing given the sunny, dry weather. We did all this, by the way, while I flew a full schedule at the airline and Dawn was busy baking and selling her popular dog treats at farmers’ markets around the area.

• READ MORE: Delays, Mistakes All Part of Building a Dream Hangar

For three weeks in June and July, we received a huge help in the form of Dawn’s parents, Tom and Marg Schmitz, visiting from South Dakota. Like my own father, Tom is a retired contractor, and Marg is quite handy as well. While I was installing appliances, working outside, finishing odd jobs, and attending to various county inspections, Tom and Marg hung all the interior doors and undertook the herculean job of painting, installing, and caulking trim. I wasn’t even planning on having much trim done before we moved in, but Tom and Marg just about finished it. And then, when I learned that the county required all 4,000 square feet of siding to be stained before final inspection, our friends Brad and Amber Phillips showed up from across the country to help us knock it out in two days.

We moved in at the start of July—initially just for the Fourth of July weekend, to get Piper away from the crazy fireworks in town. We loved being up here so much—and our productivity went up so much—that we stayed for good, occupancy permit be damned. We moved all the furniture from our previous apartment one week later. There was a delay waiting on backed-up state electrical inspectors, but on July 25 we finally had our last county inspection and passed with flying colors. Dawn and I celebrated with an outrageously good glass of Balvenie PortWood 21-year-old Scotch, which I had kept on the shelf unopened for the previous nine months as a little extra motivation. The celebratory Stinson flight is waiting on my fabric repair.

So ended phase one of the project that we dreamed up on those magical starlit passages aboard Windbird and put into motion when we bought an overgrown, brambly piece of airplane heaven. Phase two—next summer’s project—will involve improved landscaping, insulating the hangar, installing a boiler for in-floor heat, and incorporating a standby generator.

A little further down the road we’ll likely install solar panels and incorporate other off-grid improvements. And, yes, at some point we’ll probably want a bit more space to accommodate our far-flung friends from around the country and globe, and we’ll build our little three-bedroom cabin in the woods. When that happens, perhaps we’ll turn the hangar apartment into a fly-in bed-and-breakfast.

For now, we’re simply enjoying living on the strip, taking a breather from our labors, and embarking on some fun adventures while we plan our next moves.

This column first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Just Another Day in Airplane Heaven appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Let me explain. Last weekend, there were two small fly-ins taking place within about 50 miles of my home airport. The plan had originally been to attend one or both of them. Both were scheduled for Sunday, and the weather was looking like it just might cooperate. 

Here, in Wisconsin, fly-ins have achieved some notoriety for being more than just a simple gathering of airplanes. The homebuilding and restoration communities are vibrant. Warbirds and vintage aircraft are commonplace, and the owners of such aircraft love to gather. Additionally, these events usually feature some pretty tasty cook-out cuisine, typically in the form of bratwurst, burgers, and freshly fried fish.

• READ MORE: Relocating Can Be Complicated When Airplanes Are Involved

For all of these reasons, I had been looking forward to a full day of flying around the countryside, admiring beautiful airplanes, and meeting the people who fly and maintain them. But as the day approached, the main meteorological concern shifted from low ceilings to winds that, while not very high, were outside of my personal limitations—by 1.4 knots. In the interest of discipline and safety, I scrapped my plans and dedicated the day to tasks that were far less enjoyable but far more productive. 

Cancellations like this were becoming a pattern, but while frustrating at times, they were entirely a product of my own decisions. It was my decision to rent a hangar at an airport with a runway that’s perpendicular to the prevailing winds. It was my decision to be conservative with regard to my crosswind limitations. And, indeed, it was my decision to purchase a taildragger at all.

Posing the Question 

The latter decision became a point of discussion with a friend recently. Already a helicopter pilot, he was beginning to explore the possibility of purchasing something with fixed wings and then earning that rating. As fun as helicopters are, their insanely high hourly rental rates put a damper on things. 

It was he who posed the question of whether the benefits of owning a tailwheel airplane might be outweighed by the downsides. I had, after all, been canceling flights fairly regularly owing to my conservative crosswind limitation. Through his lens as a prospective owner and mine as a new one, we explored the question.

• READ MORE: GA Flight Deck Organizing Tips and Tricks

A taildragger’s downsides are few in number but pretty consequential in nature. The primary downside is, of course, the lack of stability on the ground as compared with a tricycle-gear airplane. 

In a tricycle-gear aircraft, the airplane naturally wants to align itself with the runway when touching down on the main gear. Imagine trying to push a car door open at highway speeds. It wants to remain closed, and the further you push it, the more strongly it tries to return to a closed position. Simply letting go will restore equilibrium.

• READ MORE: A GA Pilot on the Success of Oshkosh

Conversely, it’s possible to salvage a tailwheel landing in which you touch down in an extremely slight crab…on grass, anyway…but the further out of coordination you are, the more difficult it will be to recover. From the perspective of stability, a tailwheel airplane’s lack of stability would be comparable to performing the same car door experiment in a car with so-called “suicide doors,” hinged at the back. 

Crack the door open just a bit, and it will pull outward slightly. Push it open another few inches, and it will take most of your arm strength to hold in position. Each subsequent inch will increase the outward force exponentially until you can no longer hold on. The farther away from neutral you go, the more difficult it becomes to recover. Just like landing a taildragger in a crab.

The Other Downside

The other major (and related) downside to a tailwheel airplane is the higher cost of insurance. I commonly hear new taildragger pilots being quoted around $2,000 per year for insurance on types like the Cessna 170, and less than half that amount for the tricycle-gear 172. This amounts to an approximate $100/month premium for the privilege of flying a taildragger.

Considering these factors, then, what benefits are in play? And looking back, are they worth it? And in my case, has it been worth having to cancel many flights because of crosswinds that would have been manageable in something with a nosewheel?

The Technical Advantages

The actual technical advantages to owning a tailwheel airplane are legitimate, but few apply to my situation as a mediocre private pilot playing around at grass strips in the upper Midwest. The configuration provides more propeller clearance and eliminates the possibility of a gopher hole swallowing a nosewheel and ruining your engine. It also eliminates the possibility of a bad landing damaging the firewall of the airplane. Taildraggers are typically beefier and excluding ground loops, are more resistant to damage from rough surfaces and botched landings.

• READ MORE: Waiting on the First Annual Inspection Bill: A White-Knuckle Experience

Immensely Satisfying

There’s another advantage. One that’s entirely legitimate but nearly impossible to quantify or measure. Because a taildragger demands more involvement from the pilot—more physical and cognitive skill to achieve consistently good landings in varying conditions—they can be immensely satisfying to fly.

The comparison is not unlike that of a car and a motorcycle. Most modern cars are admirably easy to maneuver through sweeping curves at speed. One simply turns the wheel a bit to remain in their lane, and the car’s tires, suspension, and sometimes stability control ensure the driver is left alone to continue composing their text message. Negotiating that curve is easy and efficient. 

The motorcycle, on the other hand, is the tailwheel of road vehicles, far more demanding of the operator and far less forgiving of miscalculations. The motorcycle rider must continually remind themselves to focus farther away as they consider their line through the curve, modifying it as necessary. Along the way, body English is required; some pressure on the outside peg here, a flex of the torso there. The experience is a precisely calibrated and controlled rush, human and machine depending on each other to negotiate whatever challenges lie ahead.

It’s a big price to pay for simply getting through a curve in the road. But to those of us who bask in the ongoing mastery of a machine, it’s hugely satisfying…and addictive. To step back into a tricycle-gear airplane is to dismount the motorcycle and slide back behind the wheel of the car— fun in its own way, but a wholly different experience. 

• READ MORE: Finally, It’s Time to Solo

It was this difficult-to-quantify quality of taildragger flying that I attempted to convey to my friend. Yes, an airplane with tricycle gear is more logical in most ways. It’s cheaper to own, more forgiving to fly, and quicker to master. It enables you to operate in far more challenging winds. But a taildragger will never leave you feeling unchallenged or bored…and when you hop out and walk away after successfully negotiating a challenging crosswind or a particularly lumpy airstrip, you feel that much more personal satisfaction.

So despite having to regularly cancel planned flights because of my conservative personal crosswind limitations, I think it’s fair to say that I’m happy with my airplane choice. Sure, the learning curve is long and steep, but on the other side are many years exploring all the lush grass strips that pepper the rolling farmlands of Wisconsin and Michigan. And as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to wring every last bit of enjoyment out of the experience.

The post Should Your First Airplane Be a Taildragger? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

This piece of property has been passed down through generations of the McCutcheon family Several members of the family have learned to fly there. The runway, notated on sectionals as LA83, was the vision of Sidney McCutcheon, a Louisiana native farmer, rancher, and businessman. 

Ryan, Sidney’s great grandson, who plans to soon begin flight training, has recently taken an increased interest in the legacy flying field known as McCutcheon Field Airport.

• READ MORE: FLYING Destinations

“My great grandfather built this 2,300-foot airstrip in the late ’40s for my grandpa and great aunt,” Ryan said. “Over the years, many people, including my dad, have flown from this airstrip, and hopefully I myself will one day soon as well. 

“We’ve spent the last few months getting it back in shape and have plans for some bigger projects this spring.”

Ryan’s grandfather, Toler, and his sister, Mary Jo, were the first pilots in the McCutcheon family. Both became pilots around the same time that their father carved out a suitable landing site on family property he had owned for around a decade at the time. 

“The original tract of land the airstrip is on was around 750 acres. Today, the land is divided up between a few family members totaling around 500 acres,” Ryan said.

Legend says it took quite an effort to make sure that Sidney’s children (and now, great-grandchildren) had a convenient place to fly from. 

“From what I have been told, the airstrip took two years to complete and required a lot of dirt work to be done,” Ryan said. “I was always told that they pushed two big hills together to create the airstrip, so the construction must have begun around 1947 and the field was completed and [became] FAA official in August of 1950.”

Since its completion 72 years ago, the airfield has stayed in the family. Throughout this timeframe, the busiest times were the ’50s and ’60s, when “…there were many fly-ins hosted there.” 

These gatherings of family and friends at the runway boasted a number of aircraft, including some based at McCutcheon Field. 

“The first aircraft based at the strip was a Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser. Soon after the airstrip’s completion, a Cessna 170 was purchased and then a Piper Pacer and finally the last aircraft based at the airstrip was a Cessna 172.”

There hasn’t been an airplane based at the field since 1990. But Ryan and his father Jeffery have talked about changing that. 

In preparation for another airplane to be added to the ranks that have called McCutcheon Field home, they’ve considered the runway’s future. These discussions have turned to recent heavy landscaping work undertaken on the property.

“Recently, we had the tree line cut back on both sides of the airstrip and cleared trees on the south approach,” Ryan said. “We are going to be doing some surface maintenance this spring trying to smooth the runway out and overseed some different grass.” 

It’s 95 feet wide and there are approaches from both ends of the private, north/south runway. There’s a discrepancy between the published airstrip distance and its actual available length, advised Ryan. 

“The runway has never had any extensions, it was originally measured as 2,100 feet, but later was measured with better technology as being 2,300 feet.” 

And with acres to spare on either end of the current landing strip, there is the potential to expand. 

“We have tossed around the idea of lengthening the runway some and trying to push it to between 2,500 feet and 2,700 feet, but that is really just for the hell of it. We have no plans to own a plane that would require that length of runway.” 

Currently, the father-son duo is considering Cessna 170s and Piper Pacers. Ryan explained why these two models are front runners. 

“[We are] wanting a plane that can do STOL flying but also can cross country too,” Ryan said.

And with the hope of keeping the field operational well into the future, continued upkeep is at the top of the family’s mind. 

“Maintenance will be cutting the grass weekly during the spring and summer and small dirt-work projects here and there every couple of years.”

The post Louisiana Man Attempts to Revive a Family Aviation Tradition appeared first on FLYING Magazine.